CHAPTER 82
Ana
EVERYONE IS SO tired.
Everyone looks so tired.
“Attack! More! Attack!”
Except for Margarita Volkov.
She looks to have enough energy to run ten marathons and then come back and shout at some more figure skaters.
“You’re slouching!” she scolds, her tongue disciplined. “We stand tall. Again!”
My stomach twists when I catch sight of the small muscles across the young skater’s shoulders.
Alice’s shoulders.
They shake, trembling mine by default, I now realize, a piece of me I didn’t think had cracked just yet scattering at the motion of familiar pain.
Margarita’s pushing the young athlete toward her first triple axel.
Alice hasn’t landed one yet, but I have a feeling, any year now, she will, the next generations of skating reaching limits of how far our sport can go. And Alice is the prime example of a young skater, putting in a substantial number of hours greater than most of her older counterparts.
And yet, clearly from her coach’s barrage, it’s never enough.
I slip off my skates from the bleachers and shove them into my gym bag post-practice, my eyes picking up on the pairs team Margarita is coaching at the same time.
“Your parents are not paying me this much for you two to be this awful! Then again, why should I care when you clearly don’t? ! I still get paid.”
The young team, Adelina and Conor, stare at their coach in silence, their eyes vacant and fearful even from the stands.
Margarita presses a hand over her wrinkled forehead, the edges of her topaz shawl hitting the ground before she waves it in the air, scaring the athletes in the process, as she gives them a long sigh. “Go, I will see you tomorrow morning.”
But as soon as she shoos them off and the duo run out the rink, I watch as the coach springs back around to Alice and chides, “Don’t you want to outperform Adelina?!”
I hope, I so fucking hope, I just misheard that because Alice and Adelina are friends.
But the fear and disappointment are written loud and clear on the strawberry blonde’s electric blue eyes, and I can already feel their friendship unraveling at the harsh words.
The way so many friendships have been ruined from that chunk of ice.
_________
The senior skaters might look even more exhausted than the juniors today.
As I head back into the lobby, Katya’s slouched in a fetal position, her hands stamped over her temple like she’s trying to focus on her breathing.
Natalia’s stretching a thigh against a railing, hissing when she hits, I assume, a bruise.
Perla and Conrad are going through some paperwork off to the side, their brows pulled together in concentration.
And Scott—he’s asleep on a bench with a hand resting over his skates.
And with that, the Hummingbirds know to back off on their jabs this week.
Because it’s the week of Skate America.
_________
“God, my ass hurts so fucking bad,” Emi grumbles, handing some compression tape to Sasha for her collarbone.
“How’s your shoulder?” I ask Sasha, who simply shrugs and blinks like that was old news.
“It’ll be fine,” she huffs out, her brows raised. “Tatiana thought she could scare me with that…I once trained with two broken bones for three months in Siberia before my family moved back here.”
The soft brunette discards the purply-red-stained scrap to her side, her bold-as-hell expression casting down at me with an apologetic glance. “Sorry for ignoring you before, Ana, um, like at parties and at the rink and stuff.”
The girls exchange an awkward but sincere look, the way I always suspected underneath—they never were, fake.
But somewhere whilst hearing the apology I wonder if I really accept it.
Could a sorry fix years of damage?
“Yeah,” Emi adds, “we’re both sorry.”
So I reply, “It’s no worries. We’re good.”
But know there’s a level of dishonesty in that because they weren’t there for me when it mattered, when my real friends were, who I no longer have.
The reality is so damning and so recent, I divert the conversation abruptly.
“Margarita was so rude to her skaters today,” I share. “Like I got goose bumps just listening to the way she was speaking to them.”
When I’ve filled Emi and Sasha in on all the details of the scene, Sasha’s brows pull together.
“That’s nothing,” she says, unfazed. “My first coach threw my skates at me; she said it was to test my reflexes and when I ducked quick enough to dodge them she legit was like ‘so you can jump that fast’, or some shit like that. I think her name was Matilda.”
“Not Matilda,” Emi groans with a tortured laugh.
Then she quickly sits up like she just remembered her own share of coaching nightmares.
“My first coach kept track of my location to make sure I didn’t skip a practice.
She scared my ex so badly the poor guy broke up with me after a month.
And don’t get me started on my second coach…
” Sasha starts cackling. “Bad breath and banned me from having tacos.”
“Why tacos?” I ask, trying my best not to laugh, but both of the girls are now chuckling and it’s starting to seep into my own cheeks.
“I used to eat a bunch,” Emi explains, “it was my favorite cheat meal, and she was convinced the tortilla fat made my ass look like a balloon.”
“She actually said that to her,” Sasha says, hiccupping over a laugh, covering her mouth like she didn’t mean to just make fun of her friend.
“The coaches today are pretty tame compared to our old ones,” Emi hones in on their point.
“Well maybe except for Margarita. Apparently she also screamed at Alice for missing the landing of her lutz recently. Told her that her parents were wasting their money on her training, and that she should switch into gymnastics or ballet while she’s still young enough. ”
Alice.
That explains the streams of tears she tried to hide in the bathroom stall when I found her a few months ago.
Margarita’s cruel.
“I don’t understand,” I question. “Alice is insanely talented.”
“She is,” Emi replies, like duh, that’s the point. “But she’s not supposed to know that. As long as Margarita makes her feel like shit, Alice will become the best. Coaches know the last thing a skater needs is comfort.”
“Yup,” Sasha weighs in. “Being content kills progress. She’ll be miserable, but at least she’ll win.”
“That’s awful,” I say, hearing my voice gulp. “She’s awful.”
“Yeah, well,” Emi reminds, “that awful lady has a line of skaters begging to be trained by her, and parents willing to pay hundreds of thousands to bribe their way to the front.”
“All for a ten-year lifespan.” Sasha laughs, but it’s all cold.
All dark.
All too fucking familiar.
“That’s the skating biz for you,” Emi adds. “Determine your worth at 10 and kill you off by 20.”
Way too fucking familiar.
I flick my gaze down to my hands that have started to tremble for some odd reason.
Glancing back up, around the rink, to the sides, the root of all our troubles laughs right at us—the banners for winter sports, the blinding filigree of trophies and medals dipped in bronze, silver, and gold. Lots and lots of gold.
Funny how only one of those metals means a damn thing.
And we have a very limited window to earn one.
Opposite to like a lifespan of a vampire or a fucking fairy, a figure skater’s rein is that of a fruit fly.
Except a fruit fly doesn’t have to bear the weight of the cruelty that is social media and The Academy.